For Once
by dysprositos
Summary: Pre-Avengers. Each member of the team tries something new. Sometimes, 'new' is okay. Sometimes, it's very, very bad. Drabbles.
1. Tony

**Warnings: language, mention of drug use, vague suicidal ideation.**

**My beta, irite, is amazing and encourages me in my drabble-writing whims.**

**********This is just a little project to take a break from the longer stuff I've been working on. This section takes place during IM2.**

**I do not own The Avengers.**

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There was a point to his life now. A very clearly defined point.

For once.

It wasn't fair.

For a long time, before all of this shit, before Yinsen had decided to stick a magnet in his chest in lieu of just letting him fucking die (which he didn't really blame the man for—it had been operate or die, and Yinsen had no way of knowing what Tony wanted), his life hadn't had much of a point. And that was fine; Tony was just passing the time. He did stuff, yeah, but he didn't give a shit about most of it. Beyond drinking and fucking, there wasn't much he _did _give a shit about. He just went where Pepper told him to, smiled when the cameras started flashing, did whatever tasks were required of him, solved the problems that got thrust into his lap, and did his damndest to hide the fact that that he was doing well to just get from point A to point B.

Some days, he _didn't _get from point A to point B. Some days, he was too hungover to move and spent the day lying in bed in his own vomit. Some days, he just didn't even care enough to try to move. Some days, all he did was sit in his workshop and design things that were meant to kill lots and lots of people. And that was what he was _supposed _to do. What he had been told to do. That was what brought the big bucks in, that was his life's purpose.

Some purpose.

He could tell himself all sorts of pretty lies about how the bombs he built saved lives, but at the end of the day, the point was that Tony didn't give a shit about the lives he took _or _the lives he saved. None of it mattered.

He wasn't big into self-psychoanalysis because he had to listen to his own inane, whining thoughts 24/7 (he was a 'genius' and that meant _it never shut off_) and he didn't want to exacerbate that condition by _thinking_. And he didn't particularly think he'd _like _what he'd discover if he actually paid attention to the shit going on in his mind.

So he did his best to block it out.

The booze helped. The women helped. The blow helped, when things got really bad. But things had, for a long time, been getting 'really bad' more and more often. Or maybe his threshold for 'really bad' was getting really low. Either way, he'd been getting strung out. Unable to sleep. Truth be told, he'd been getting pretty damn close to rock bottom.

In a way, what happened in Afghanistan was lucky.

It led to Iron Man.

And that had been a turning point, had given him new purpose. Had allowed him to do more than just 'pass the time.' Being a 'superhero' was, quite frankly, badass. It was better than any other distraction he'd found. The adrenaline, the danger, scratched that itch that he'd had as long as he could remember. Filled the void he'd been trying to fill his whole life. And at the same time, he was doing _good_, for once, was _helping people_.

For once, his life wasn't a pointless waste of time.

For once, it was enough.

He was...if not exactly happy, then satisfied. More complete than he'd ever been, at least. He quit the drugs. He mostly quit the women. The booze, well...no one's perfect. But all together, it was progress. He was stabilizing. Finding what he believed he was truly meant to do with his life.

He actually felt _alive_, instead of like the walking corpse he'd been for decades.

And the world was a better place for having him in it. That was something that Tony had never thought he'd see happen. He figured he'd leave the world littered with shrapnel and explosives residue, but otherwise exactly the same shithole place it was before him. But no, he was actually making a difference. Actually doing something that might...

_Might have made your father proud_.

Tony shook his head ruefully. Of course, it was too good to last.

"Isn't it always, though?" he mused aloud to no one, looking at the readout on his blood toxicity meter.

**49%**

Tony cursed softly to himself. The palladium poisoning was getting worse, faster than he'd thought it would. He was running out of time.

Didn't it just _figure _that the thing that had saved him was going to kill him? And just as he'd stopped fucking everything up, had started getting a grasp on the whole fucking _point _of life.

For once, he mattered. For once, he cared about what happened to him.

And for once, he actually wanted to_ live_. More than anything, really, because for once, things had been getting _better _and not worse.

Tony sighed.

For once, he didn't appreciate the irony of the situation.

And for once, he was powerless. All the genius, all the money, all the technology in the world could _not _solve an unsolvable problem, and that was what he was faced with.

A problem that he _could not solve_.

For once, there was no way around the obstacle. No solutions, no improbable technological breakthrough waiting around the corner.

Nothing.

And so for once—finally, _finally_—he was going to quit.

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**Review are always welcome. And encouraged.**


	2. Bruce

**Warnings: suicide attempt.**

**Thanks to my beta, irite, without whom chapters 2-? of this wouldn't exist.**

**This takes place pre-Incredible Hulk.**

**I do not own The Avengers.**

* * *

He wasn't going to hurt anyone.

For once.

Okay, maybe that was a little melodramatic. It wasn't like he had a long history of...this. Even if it felt like it had been longer, felt like he'd been damned for an _eternity _at this point, it hadn't even been half a year.

But before all of this, Bruce had never been a violent man. Despite his...upbringing...he wasn't violent. And he'd never really hurt anyone. Hadn't wanted to hurt anyone, hadn't seriously thought about hurting anyone, much less undertaken steps to carry out violence.

Until five months ago.

Things had changed in January.

Working as a physicist wasn't supposed to be dangerous. And Bruce, well, Bruce was a cautious man. He always thought before he acted, considered every angle, was sometimes almost paralyzed with doubt. So this really never should have happened.

But Bruce was also a responsible man. He took his work seriously. And that was the issue, really. The crux of the problem. He knew that agreeing to test the serum on himself was a terrible, terrible idea, he _knew _it. But for once, he ignored his better judgment, ignored what his common sense was trying to tell him. After all, Ross assured him, this needed to be done. It was his job, and it needed to be done. Bruce had let the patriotic rhetoric sway him into making the decision hastily.

For once, Bruce's work ethic bit him in the ass.

It wasn't fair, but that was really the least of Bruce's problems. At least, it was now.

For once, Bruce actually had _no _problems. Nothing. Because this was it.

Bruce knew the truck driver had thought he was insane, asking to be dropped off out here. But he didn't say anything, even as Bruce could feel the guy's eyes burning into the back of his head as he moved away from the road.

He was alone out here, but still, to be safe, Bruce snowshoed quite the distance to make sure he really, truly was in the middle of nowhere before he stopped.

And that's what this was. The middle of nowhere.

The end.

But this was necessary. Because Bruce wasn't going to hurt anyone. Not anymore, not if he could help it.

What he'd done to the lab, what he'd done to _Betty_...he couldn't believe it at the time. Could not wrap his head around the fact that _he_ was capable of that kind of destruction. Of that kind of violence. He'd never believed it was in him. Or perhaps he'd just _hoped _that it wasn't in him—it had been in his father, after all, but Bruce had lived most of his life thinking he was free of that barbarity, that he had escaped its clutches.

Apparently not.

In the subsequent months, of course, he'd had time to come to terms with it. To accept it. That it _was_ him. These things, these 'incidents' just kept happening, over and over again. Where he went, destruction followed. Would follow. Always. That was what he was, now, and _nothing could ever fix him_.

For once, all of his intelligence was useless. Because it couldn't save him, couldn't reverse the _monstrosity _that he'd become, so what damn good was it?

It didn't make any sense, what had happened. Bruce knew that. He knew he should have died when that experiment went wrong. He couldn't understand why he _hadn't_. He could not understand how this was better. If he believed in God, he might have thought that this was part of the master plan of the universe, that there was some cosmic order to this. But Bruce was a scientist, and he saw this not as part of a cosmic plan but as a horrific, disgusting freak accident. Something that needed to be corrected.

So he was going to put it right. Once and for all.

Hence the arctic expedition.

Bruce wasn't a quitter in general, but for once, he was willing to make an exception. He'd seen what had happened to his cells, he'd seen the scans and the tests. He couldn't explain it. The only thing he could state definitively was that, when he experienced highly intense emotions, he turned into a massive, green, rampaging monster. He couldn't live like that—_wouldn't _live like that, wouldn't risk it any longer. He'd tried to find a cure, he couldn't, and now it was time to put the beast down. For good.

He looked down at the gun in his hand. It was heavy. He'd felt awkward with it in the waistband of his pants, and he felt, if possible, even more awkward with it in his hand. He was not, after all, the sort of man who wielded a gun.

Although, technically...he wasn't strictly any sort of 'man' at all, anymore. But for once, he was going to let the science of it go.

He was going to let _everything _go.

Bruce took a deep breath and cocked the gun.

He thought, in that moment, of Betty. There was a flash—brief, ephemeral—of everything beautiful that had existed between them, of their entire relationship, of everything that had been...and of everything that would never be.

It was supplanted almost immediately by the harsh, wrenching image of her broken body lying in a hospital bed.

For once, Bruce did not hesitate, did not think, did not doubt for a moment that _this _was it, that this was the right choice.

He put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

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	3. Thor

**Warnings: none.**

**Thanks to my beta, irite, who is awesome. Yup.**

**This takes place post-Thor.**

**I do not own The Avengers.**

* * *

He was in his brother's shadow, for once, and wasn't that a change.

Until...all of this, Thor would have _claimed _they were equals, would have _claimed _that neither one of them held any kind of rank above the other. The idea that Loki had lived his whole life in Thor's shadow would have been absurd, completely incomprehensible to him.

How blind he had been.

But Thor knew now that it was his arrogance that blinded him to Loki's resentment. His arrogant belief that because _he _did not see something, then surely it did not exist. It had never occurred to him that Loki would hold this inside of him, would live day after endless day, letting it eat away at him.

'I only ever wanted to be your equal,' Loki had said. The clear implication was that he believed he _wasn't_. That he had been living under that belief for who knows how long. That he had accepted it as truth, had taken it to his core, had let it wrap itself around him until he couldn't escape it.

For once, Thor was willing to admit that he had misjudged the situation, had misjudged his _ brother_, most grievously.

But now Loki was gone, and Thor was never going to have the opportunity to admit his mistake, admit to Loki that he had been blind and wrong. And Loki deserved to hear it.

And his...departure left Thor in Loki's shadow, an abrupt role reversal that Thor had never seen coming, in large part because he had never seen their relationship in that light at all. It was now days after Loki had plunged from the Bifrost, days since all of Asgard had mourned his passing, and the people of Asgard could speak of nothing but their fallen prince and his misguided, genocidal actions. The whispers that Thor heard as he passed through the crowds unnoticed made him seethe—the people spoke of Loki as though he had been, from the start, naught but a wayward, jealous child, envious of his brother for centuries, just waiting for the opportunity to take the throne.

But Loki, by his own admission, had never wanted the throne.

Through it all, Loki was not there to defend himself, and for once Thor's attempts to speak in his brother's favor, to get the people to _listen_, fell upon deaf ears. The people _would not listen_. Thor was soundly ignored in favor of the wild claims that _none _knew what specters had haunted their prince's mind, none knew what insanity, what flaws, ran through his character. Yes, they disparaged Loki, they slandered him, and underneath it all was a whisper of something darker, more sinister.

They were saying that their prince was not their prince at all. They said he was some_thing _else entirely.

Thor would not stand by and let his brother be spoken of in such a way, but his protestations did little to quell the shadows and whispers running through the palace, and so it was in a moment of pure frustrated rage that Thor burst into the throne room to confront his father about the lies he was letting spread unhindered throughout the realm.

For once, Odin did not react to the disrespect.

Instead, he sighed and listened to Thor's ranting. When he was finished, Odin told him that he was absolutely right, that he had been lax in ruling, had not made enough of an effort to lead his people.

And then he told Thor that the whispers, the _lies_, were actually true.

Odin did not know how the secret had gotten out, who had discovered the truth or _how_, but it _was _the truth.

Loki was a Frost Giant.

In a flash, Thor understood his brother clearly, understood what had driven him to act, what had very likely driven him to his death. He saw, as if Loki had laid it out before him, the convoluted logic that had been the foundation of Loki's scheme. He saw _why _Loki had done what he had done, and he saw why Loki's failure—why Odin's rejection—had broken him.

He saw it all, crystal clear, and looking into Odin's eyes, Thor could see that his father understood it, too. His father understood it, his father had _known_. Had known what Loki _was_, what Loki_ thought_, what Loki was _going to do _as he hung from the Bifrost, and still done _nothing _to stop it. This was completely incomprehensible to Thor; in that moment, he had to accept that he did not know his father anymore. Had, perhaps, never known him at all.

The truth threw him.

But for once, miraculously, Thor thought before he acted.

Odin had done nothing, but Thor would not do the same. He would do better. Be better.

So Thor restrained himself from hefting Mjölnir from his belt and lashing out at the nearest person or object, and instead stiffly nodded and bade his father farewell.

He had a job to do.

And so for once, Thor set out on his own. He wasn't sure why it had to be that way, but it felt right. Right that he should be alone. Because wherever Loki was, he was alone, too.

Thor refused to believe Loki dead, refused to accept what seemed like indisputable fact. Refused to accept that Loki was lost forever. His brother was _somewhere _in the universe, and Thor was going to find him.

Although, he had no idea what he could possibly do to fix this if he ever _did _find Loki.

For once, the son of Odin was faltering. Doubtful. Unsure.

But he wouldn't let that stop him.

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	4. Clint

**Warnings: Clint's mouth.**

**Infinite gratitude to my beta, irite!**

**Edited to add: douche that I am, I forgot to mention that parts of this are inspired by irite's fic, "We'll Always Have Paris." Which you should read.**

**I do not own The Avengers.**

* * *

He'd fucked up the mission.

Again.

_That _wasn't really new. Clint had fucked up his fair share of missions. Usually because he disagreed with his orders, thought things would go better if he did them his way. He was generally right, though, which was why he kept doing it, even as it pissed off the higher ups and had landed him right at the top of the Director's shit list.

And what a glorious place _that _was to be.

For once, though, he'd fucked up a mission because he didn't agree that the mission needed to be carried out.

For once, it had been intentional.

"You need to clean this up, Barton," the Director snarled at him over the phone.

Clint was not in any mood to listen to a lecture. This was because he was currently in the hospital, getting stitches put in just above his eyebrow and all down one arm. The cut on his arm was from a knife, the cut on his face was from being kicked by someone wearing 4-inch stiletto heels.

It hurt like a bitch.

But he refrained from telling the Director where he could shove it. Barely.

Basically, what had happened was this: Clint had gotten his orders, he'd read them, and he hadn't liked them.

But he'd been all set to ignore that. For once, he was going to do as he was told, like a good little government assassin. After all, he'd fucked up so many times in the last couple of months that he _knew _everyone's patience was getting thin. Rumor was that if he didn't get his shit together, he was going to find himself back on the streets, no matter how hard Coulson lobbied in his favor. There was only so much the man could do, Clint knew—he wondered when Coulson would just stop trying, would just give up and accept that he couldn't save the little circus freak with uncannily good aim.

He hadn't given up yet, though, something Clint found confusing as hell. He couldn't figure out _why _Coulson had brought him in to begin with, let alone why the man kept risking his job to keep him.

Whatever the reason, Clint didn't want to let him down again, not after everything he'd done. Clint knew he owed it to Coulson to be better, even if it chafed. And underneath that was the simple truth that Clint didn't _want _to be back out in the cold, on his own. Not if he could do anything about it.

So Clint had been all set to take down this target—Black Widow, they called her, like that wasn't just _aching_ for a joke—and make Coulson's life a little easier for once. He was on a rooftop, all set up to take his shot, and then he'd actually _seen _her.

She was just a kid.

And that fucked with him, because he knew what it was like to be a kid wrapped up in this shit. He'd been there less than two years ago, had barely managed to get out of it alive. He'd been well on his way to prison or worse when Coulson had gotten to him. Had given him a chance.

Could this kid make the same kind of change? Didn't she deserve a chance to try?

Which was when Clint decided he was going to fuck up the mission. But for Coulson's sake, at least, he had to try and make this look, well, authentic.

Clint raised his rifle and took his shot.

For once, he missed.

If anyone asked, of course he'd say it was an accident. That he had miscalculated how much wind there was, that she had moved at the last second.

It hadn't been an accident, though.

She'd heard the shot and taken off, running remarkably fast for someone wearing _those_ shoes and _that _dress. Clint, of course, knew he had to pursue her—if nothing else, they needed to talk—and so he had. She'd led him on a twisting chase through the darkest streets and alleys of Berlin, and he'd finally cornered her in a dead end.

The Black Widow did not take being cornered well, he would discover quickly.

And Clint wasn't nearly so good at hand-to-hand as he was at working from a distance. He wasn't bad, fuck, he was pretty damn good, actually. But she made him look like an amateur.

Before he could explain anything—who he was, why he'd missed his shot—she'd struck out, knife in hand.

Clint didn't even know where she'd been stashing it.

For once, Clint had his ass handed to him in a fight.

The Director wasn't impressed with how that had turned out—hence calling Clint directly instead of going through Coulson—and so Clint tried to placate him so Coulson wouldn't feel his wrath. "Yes, sir. Of course I'll clean this up. I'll take care of it."

He _needed _to talk to the kid, after all, needed to get this shit straightened out, needed to let her know what he could offer her.

"Yeah, you'd better. Consider it your last assignment, Barton."

The line went dead.

_Ouch._

The nurse finished up his stitches a few minutes later, advising him how to take care of them so they didn't scar—like he'd never had stitches before—and she sent him off with some painkillers he had no intention of using.

Then he went back to his hotel room to plan.

For once, he did it on his own. This was going to be his last mission, and he wasn't going to bring Coulson down with him if things went south. Coulson was a good man, and he didn't deserve that, even if he _had_ been stupid enough to get involved in Clint's fucked up life. Clint hoped he could make some of the higher ups see that this Black Widow deserved a chance to change, the same chance he'd been given...even if he _had _squandered it. Well, he was just a circus rat, no changing that. Hopefully she'd be better than him. Hell, she'd already shown she was better in a fight.

Clint, for once, didn't resent someone else's skills, didn't mind being bested. That kind of talent meant that she'd have a shot. If they'd taken him, they'd take her.

He knew this was probably going to end in disaster—she could kill him, or they could both end up dead. He'd certainly be fired if he came out of this alive, the Director had made that perfectly clear.

But that didn't really matter. For once, Clint knew beyond a shadow of a doubt he was doing the right thing.

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**Yeah, this one's a little longer. Clint is one wordy son of a bitch.**

**Or maybe it's just me.**

**Please review. They make me sing and dance. Which is awkward.**


	5. Nat

**Warnings: none.**

**Thanks to irite for being betamazing.**

**Speaking of irite, some elements of this are borrowed from her story, "We'll Always Have Paris." Which you should read.**

**I do not own The Avengers. **

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For once, she was being given something for nothing.

Natalia did not trust that at all, but for once, that was okay.

Still, she was tense as she leaned against the wall of the motel room, arms crossed tightly across her chest, watching the American agent—Barton—try to get ahold of whoever he needed to talk to so that this mess could get cleaned up.

It _was_ a mess.

Two days ago, she'd been working on a hit in Berlin. Her target was some politician who'd offended the wrong people with his stance on something or other—Natalia had skipped most of that part in the file. She'd been planning on isolating him at a fundraiser, enchanting him into going 'home' with her, and taking him out in private.

Simple, really. At least, it should have been.

But for once, her plans had been shot to hell. Literally. She'd been all set to go into the fundraiser, done up in the style her mark's file indicated he preferred, with her chintzy dress and high heels and the makeup she'd spent way too much time applying (in her opinion, at least), but then someone on a nearby rooftop had fired a shot at her.

They'd missed.

She'd spent a heartbeat reflecting on the recent decline in the quality of snipers, and then she'd taken off, running as fast as she could in those damn shoes, because she knew an assassin—even one with aim that bad—wouldn't just leave the job undone.

Natalia led the man—it _was_ a man, she saw, glancing over her shoulder—on one hell of a chase, but in the end, the damn shoes had been her downfall. She couldn't take them off fast enough to just leave them behind, and she couldn't run in them like she needed to, and so she'd been cornered.

But that didn't mean she was going to give up. Natalia Romanova did _not_ give up.

Even if she wanted to.

She'd taken the man on with no hesitation. _He'd_ seemed hesitant, awkward, like his heart wasn't even in it, but that hadn't stopped her. She pulled a knife out of a leg sheath and gone straight in for the kill.

For once, though...she'd left her attacker alive. Incapacitated, yes. Bleeding, yes. But very much alive.

She couldn't rationalize it. It was a stupid thing to do. Best she could figure, she'd been surprised. The way he'd hesitated, like he _wasn't_ going to attack her, like he didn't want to...that was strange. She didn't know what it meant, but it had been enough to startle her into letting him live.

Letting him live had been dangerous, and so Natalia wasn't surprised at all that he came for her again. She _was_ surprised by how quickly he acted, how quickly he'd found her.

It shamed her to admit it, but for once, she'd been caught off guard.

Of course she'd underestimated him, she saw that later, when she'd seen him at his best. But what choice had she had before? He'd missed a very simple shot, he'd seemed more or less incompetent while fighting her. All in all, he did not seem like a very formidable foe.

American, in a word.

But then, a day after their first encounter, he'd _materialized_ in her rooms, despite all of her safeguards against such an invasion, and had awakened her in the middle of the night with a gun pressed at her temple.

_Perhaps_, she'd been forced to admit to herself in that moment, _this American is more competent than he seems_.

Natalia had braced herself then for her death—for the pain, for whatever might come after—but this American assassin was full of surprises.

He did not kill her. Instead, with his gun still against her head (at least he'd let her sit up, let them have this conversation with _some_ dignity), he'd explained why he was there. He had, of course, been sent to kill her, but he didn't want to. He said it was because he used to have a life like hers, working for the highest bidder, getting deeper and deeper into a life which held no hope of escape, no hope of anything, really, except endless guilt, inescapable danger, and a premature (and probably painful) death.

At the end of his explanation, he'd offered her a way out of all of it.

Natalia's first reaction, of course, had been derisive laughter. Because what could he possibly know about it, this American? What could he know about her life? About what she'd been through, about what she had to deal with? He knew _nothing_.

There was no escape from this life. Natalia had accepted that years ago.

And his plan to bring her into his organization? Completely ludicrous. The way it sounded to her, his boss was going to shoot _both _of them on sight if he didn't complete his mission satisfactorily.

The American—Clint Barton, he said his name was—had agreed with that with an easy shrug and an almost-indolent, "Yeah, I'm fucked. But you _want_ out, right?"

She'd nodded cautiously. Natalia had never _considered_ that she _could _do anything else, but now that she had, she was...intrigued. To live a life that wasn't comprised of murder, of danger, of endless running? _Could_ that ever happen?

Barton grinned, a challenge clear on his face. "Then what've you got to lose?"

Natalia thought the answer to that was obvious-if she trusted him, it was going to get her killed. No question about it. His organization did not seem overly fond of her—why _wouldn't_ they just execute her, given the chance? It was clearly their goal.

"Have a little faith," had been Barton's suggestion to that. And he'd stepped back and lowered his gun, leaning back against the wall casually, completely at ease. "Look. Coulson's a good man. He'll be able to protect you, once he knows what's going on. I mean, he protected me. Besides," and Barton had shrugged, "You have to trust someone, right?"

Natalia didn't agree with that. At all. It was probably one of the stupidest things she'd ever heard.

But here was this assassin, sent to kill her, instead relaxing in her room, apparently unconcerned that she might attack him. Might kill him. Could easily do so with the gun under her pillow, the knife still on her thigh, before he had a chance to act.

He had to know that. So that meant he trusted that she wouldn't.

_He_ trusted _her._

It was insane, but no one had ever trusted her before. Not so implicitly, and certainly not so easily. So, for once, Natalia did something that went completely against her instincts, completely against her better judgment.

After all, she couldn't let his challenge go unanswered.

So she trusted him, too. "Fine. Do what you must."

That's when Barton had picked up the phone.

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	6. Steve

**Warnings: none.**

**Thanks, as always, to my beta, irite, for helping me wrangle Steve.**

**This takes place post-Captain America/early-Avengers.**

**I do not own the Avengers.**

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There was a war going on.

But for once, Steve wasn't going to have anything to do with it.

They told him, once he'd calmed down, once he'd gotten a handle on himself, that he'd been in 'suspended animation' for almost seventy years. Steve didn't listen to the specifics—it all sounded like scientific gobbledygook, like something straight out of a movie or something.

The sort of thing that Howard would have loved.

But he wasn't going to think about that.

Steve found the whole seventy years thing hard to wrap his head around. Seventy years was a long time. By all means, he should be an old man. Or dead. Like his friends, like _everyone _he'd known.

But here he was, still young. Still alive.

Alone.

And in the completely wrong era. In seventy years, the world had changed. It was louder, brighter. Crowded. Everything was always moving. The _people _were always moving, rushed, hurried. They were rude. They were...awful. The first time Steve went out on his own, without a SHIELD chaperone or two hovering just behind him, a guy had asked him for some change for the bus. Steve had taken out his wallet, and the guy had snatched it and taken off down the street before Steve could even react.

When he _did _react, it had just been a long, weary sigh.

Everything, all of it—the noise, the lights, the rush, the people—just rubbed him the wrong way, chafed against him.

The world had changed.

But at least in some ways, it was exactly the same.

For example, there was a war going on.

Steve, though, wasn't going to get involved in that. He didn't plan on getting involved in anything. Anyway, Fury said it wasn't his fight, that he'd probably do more harm than good. And, once the director had explained it, had laid out exactly what was going on in the Middle East, Steve was willing to concede, for once, that he really had no place in the conflict. It was ugly, and confused, and Steve, well, Steve was old-fashioned.

Dated.

He was old-fashioned, and so, for once, he retreated.

He called it 'retirement.'

For once, Steve found himself with unlimited free time and very little to fill it. Before, he'd always had to work just to subsist, barely surviving day-to-day, with his health and the infrequent jobs he was offered. And then there'd been the war, which kept him busy. Now SHIELD covered his expenses (no strings attached, even; Steve figured they felt bad for un-freezing him), not that there were many of them. He moved into a small apartment, with his pencils and drawing paper and his few clothes, that he'd insisted on choosing himself. He joined a gym. When he needed groceries, he went down the street to the small grocery store on the corner. If he needed something they didn't have, he took the subway.

His whole life condensed down to a few small city blocks.

And that was fine. For once, Steve didn't feel the wanderlust he'd known his whole life. He didn't feel the urge to get out and _do_ something. He wasn't exactly _content_ with his empty life, with his lack of purpose. It was just...what was the point of trying to change it? He'd done that. He'd done the whole 'save the world' thing. And what had that gotten him, really? Everyone he'd ever known was dead.

The world wasn't even really a better place for his efforts, for having been saved. There was, after all, a war going on.

At first, it was nice, having nothing to do. He drew, and boxed, and sometimes (though rarely) wandered the city that had once been home but was now as foreign as Paris or Berlin.

But the unlimited free time did, after a while, get...old. Still, the first time Director Fury approached him with a job offer, Steve said no.

Bored as he was, he had no real interest in rendering any services for any government organization. He was done with service. Had, for once, come to the decision that they could all damn well do without him.

Because he'd done such a wonderful job of taking charge of things in the past.

And so the months passed quietly, and Steve ignored Director Fury's increasingly infrequent overtures. Occasionally, he'd send agents over with materials from the war, stuff he apparently thought Steve would be interested in. And Steve watched the films, and he read the articles, but all it really did was reassure him that he had made the right choice when he'd 'retired.'

Apparently, though, his retirement wasn't meant to last.

It'd been another day, just like every other day before it. He'd spent most of it out and about, running errands. He'd even gotten some drawing in. For once, he'd only had one or two awkward interactions with other people; Steve thought maybe he was finally, _finally_ getting a hang of the twenty-first century.

Still, despite that, the whole thing had been pretty stressful, so he decided he'd head to the gym to blow off some steam.

He'd just killed his second 100-lb punching bag of the evening when Fury came by.

Regardless of how creepy he thought it was that Fury could find him _anywhere_, Steve was all set to tell him no again, to tell him where he could stuff his 'mission.' But then Fury said the world needed saving.

Which probably wouldn't have been enough to sway him (because Steve was retired and thus _done _with world saving) except the Tesseract was involved.

And _that_ was Steve's responsibility. Undeniably. No matter how much he'd rather forget about everything that had happened seventy years ago...he couldn't. Because it was apparently going to haunt him forever.

So no matter how much he _didn't_ want to take the mission...he could not, in good conscience, let this mess go unresolved.

For once, he took the file Fury was offering.

* * *

**Thanks for reading! Writing Steve is akin to torture, and I'm apprehensive every time I try.**

**And this concludes my little side project. Which makes me a little sad.**

**Reviews are appreciated; thanks to everyone who's reviewed, followed, and favorited, too!**


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